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      <h1><a href="../index.html">Django 1.11.22.dev20190603194737 documentation</a></h1>
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          <div class="yui-g" id="misc-api-stability">
            
  <div class="section" id="s-api-stability">
<span id="api-stability"></span><h1>API stability<a class="headerlink" href="#api-stability" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>Django promises API stability and forwards-compatibility since version 1.0. In
a nutshell, this means that code you develop against a version of Django will
continue to work with future releases. You may need to make minor changes when
upgrading the version of Django your project uses: see the “Backwards
incompatible changes” section of the <a class="reference internal" href="../releases/index.html"><span class="doc">release note</span></a> for
the version or versions to which you are upgrading.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-what-stable-means">
<span id="what-stable-means"></span><h2>What “stable” means<a class="headerlink" href="#what-stable-means" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>In this context, stable means:</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">All the public APIs (everything in this documentation) will not be moved
or renamed without providing backwards-compatible aliases.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">If new features are added to these APIs – which is quite possible –
they will not break or change the meaning of existing methods. In other
words, “stable” does not (necessarily) mean “complete.”</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">If, for some reason, an API declared stable must be removed or replaced, it
will be declared deprecated but will remain in the API for at least two
feature releases. Warnings will be issued when the deprecated method is
called.</p>
<p>See <a class="reference internal" href="../internals/release-process.html#official-releases"><span class="std std-ref">Official releases</span></a> for more details on how Django’s version
numbering scheme works, and how features will be deprecated.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">We’ll only break backwards compatibility of these APIs if a bug or
security hole makes it completely unavoidable.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-stable-apis">
<span id="stable-apis"></span><h2>Stable APIs<a class="headerlink" href="#stable-apis" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>In general, everything covered in the documentation – with the exception of
anything in the <a class="reference internal" href="../internals/index.html"><span class="doc">internals area</span></a> is considered stable.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-exceptions">
<span id="exceptions"></span><h2>Exceptions<a class="headerlink" href="#exceptions" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>There are a few exceptions to this stability and backwards-compatibility
promise.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-security-fixes">
<span id="security-fixes"></span><h3>Security fixes<a class="headerlink" href="#security-fixes" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>If we become aware of a security problem – hopefully by someone following our
<a class="reference internal" href="../internals/security.html#reporting-security-issues"><span class="std std-ref">security reporting policy</span></a> – we’ll do
everything necessary to fix it. This might mean breaking backwards
compatibility; security trumps the compatibility guarantee.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-apis-marked-as-internal">
<span id="apis-marked-as-internal"></span><h3>APIs marked as internal<a class="headerlink" href="#apis-marked-as-internal" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Certain APIs are explicitly marked as “internal” in a couple of ways:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Some documentation refers to internals and mentions them as such. If the
documentation says that something is internal, we reserve the right to
change it.</li>
<li>Functions, methods, and other objects prefixed by a leading underscore
(<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">_</span></code>). This is the standard Python way of indicating that something is
private; if any method starts with a single <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">_</span></code>, it’s an internal API.</li>
</ul>
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  <h3><a href="../contents.html">Table of Contents</a></h3>
  <ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">API stability</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#what-stable-means">What “stable” means</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#stable-apis">Stable APIs</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#exceptions">Exceptions</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#security-fixes">Security fixes</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#apis-marked-as-internal">APIs marked as internal</a></li>
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